At first, indeed, neither boy nor horse was seen; but as Mr Stewart advanced to examine whether, by removing the hay, which partly covered the bridge and partly hung suspended on the bushes, the road might still be passable, he heard a child's voice in the hollow exclaiming, 'Come on, ye muckle brute! ye had as weel come on! I'll gar ye! I'll gar ye! That's a gude beast now. Come awa'! That's it! Ay, ye're a gude beast now!' As the last words were uttered, a little fellow of about ten years of age was seen issuing from the hollow, and pulling after him, with all his might, a great long-backed clumsy animal of the horse species, though apparently of a very mulish temper. 'You have met with a sad accident,' said Mr Stewart; 'how did all this happen?' 'You may see how it happened plain enough,' returned the boy; the brig brak, and the cart coupet.' 'And did you and the horse coup likewise?' said Mr Stewart. 'O ay, we a' coupet thegither, for I was ridin' on his back.' And where is your father and all the rest of the folk?' 'Whaur sud they be but in the hay-field? Dinna ye ken that we're takin' in our hay? John Tamson's and Jamie Forster's was in a week syne, but we're aye ahint the lave.'

All the party were greatly amused by the composure which the young peasant evinced under his misfortune, as well as by the shrewdness of his answers; and having learned from him that the hay-field was at no great distance, gave him some halfpence to hasten his speed, and promised to take care of his horse till he should return with assistance. He soon appeared, followed by his father and two other men, who came on stepping at their usual pace. Why, farmer,' said Mr Stewart, 'you have trusted rather too long to this rotten plank, I think' (pointing to where it had given way); 'if you remember the last time I passed this road, which was several months since, I then told you that the bridge was in danger, and shewed you how easily it might be repaired.' 'It is a' true,' said the farmer, moving his bonnet; but I thought it would do weel eneugh. I spoke to Jamie Forster and John Tamson about it; but they said they wadna fash themselves to mend a brig that was to serve a' the folk in the glen.' 'But you must now mend it for your own sake,' said Mr Stewart, 'even though a' the folk in the glen should be the better for it.' 6 Ay, sir,' said one of the men, 'that's spoken like yoursel'! Would everybody follow your example, there would be nothing in the world but peace and good neighbourhood.'

One somewhat didactic Scottish song, 'My ain Fireside,' by Miss Hamilton, attained great popularity, and is still often sung. The first verse is as follows:

I hae seen great anes, and sat in great ha's,
'Mang lords and fine ladies a' covered wi' braws,
At feasts made for princes wi' princes I've been,
When the grand shine o' splendour has dazzled my een;
But a sight sae delightfu' I trow I ne'er spied

As the bonny blithe blink o' my ain fireside.
My ain fireside, my ain fireside,

O cheery's the blink o' my ain fireside;

My ain fireside, my ain fireside,

O there's nought to compare wi' ane's ain fireside. Mrs Hamilton's Memoirs, with letters and papers, were published in 1815 by Miss Benger.

are

not

Minor Scotch Song-Writers. Among the minor Scotch song-writers of the eighteenth century, many of whom thoroughly identified, the following deserve mention. George Halket (died 1756), a drunken Aberdeenshire schoolmaster, who published in 1727 a worthless volume of 'Occasional Poems,' is credited with the authorship of Logie o' Buchan, and of the spirited Jacobite song, Whirry Whigs Awa'. Other Jacobite rhymesters were the Rev. Murdoch M'Lennan (1701-83), minister of Crathie, who described the Race of Sheriffmuir in the spirited ballad bearing the refrain 'We ran and they ran ;' and Adam Skirving (1719-1803), a gentlemanfarmer of Haddingtonshire, who witnessed the battle of Prestonpans and celebrated it in Tranent Muir and Hey Johnnie Cope. Isobel Pagan (died 1821), an eccentric spinster who sold unlicensed whisky near Muirkirk, is said to have been the authoress of the well-known pastoral song, Ca' the Yowes to the Knowes, which Burns polished up for George Thomson in 1794. A collection of her songs and poems appeared at Glasgow about 1805. -From the mouth of Jean Glover (1758–1801), an Ayrshire tramp, street-singer, and thief, Burns took down the words of her song, Ower the Muir amang the Heather. Another oddity was Dougal Graham (1724-79), the hunchback bellman of Glasgow, who in his earlier years had peddled in Stirlingshire, and accompanied the Jacobite army (as a campfollower, doubtless, rather than a combatant) to Derby and Culloden. His Account of the Rebellion (1746), though mere doggerel, has some worth as an historic document, and Sir Walter Scott thought of editing it for the Bannatyne Club. Graham was the author of many popular chapbooks, including John Cheap the Chapman and The History of Haverel Wives; and some of his verses-those notably on the Turnimspike, describing the Highlanders' notion of the roads of General Wadeare not lacking in rude vigour. His works were published in a limited edition in 1883. different figure from these was Dr Adam Austin, a fashionable Edinburgh physician, who solaced his grief by writing The Lack of Gold when Miss Jean Drummond of Megginch jilted him for the Duke of Athole in 1749. For Mrs Elizabeth Grant, author of Roy's Wife, see above at page 596; and for Jean Adam and There's nae Luck about the House, see page 523.

A very

John Mayne (1759-1836), born in Dumfries, died in London proprietor and joint-editor of The Star newspaper. He was brought up as a printer, and whilst apprentice in the Dumfries Journal office in 1777, in his eighteenth year, he published the germ of his Siller Gun in a quarto page of twelve stanzas; and this he continued to enlarge and improve up to the time of his death. twelve stanzas expanded in two years to cantos; in 1780, enlarged to three cantos, the poem was published in Ruddiman's Magazine;

The two

and in 1808 it was published in London in four cantos. Of this edition Sir Walter Scott said (in a note to the Lady of the Lake) 'that it surpassed the efforts of Fergusson and came near to those of Burns.' An edition in five cantos was published in 1836. Mayne was author of a short poem on Hallowe'en,' printed in Ruddiman's Magazine in 1780, which had a direct influence on Burns's treatment of the same subject; and in 1781 he published his fine ballad of Logan Braes, two lines of which Burns copied into his Logan Water. Many have thought Mayne's the better poem of the two. His version of Helen of Kirkconnel is often quoted. For five years (1782-87) he was employed in the office of the brothers Foulis in Glasgow. His poem on 'Glasgow,' published in the Glasgow Magazine in 1783, was separately issued in 1803, and is a description of Glasgow and its ways, in the verse specially favoured by Burns, and a laudation of the energy and accomplishments of its citizens. The Siller Gun is humorous and descriptive. The subject of the poem is an ancient custom in Dumfries, called 'Shooting for the Siller Gun,' the gun being a small silver tube presented by James VI. to the incorporated trades as a prize to the best marksman. It is after the manner of Peblis to the Play and cognate rhymes down to Fergusson and Burns.

Logan Braes.

By Logan's streams that rin sae deep,
Fu' aft wi' glee I've herded sheep,
Herded sheep and gathered slaes,
Wi' my dear lad on Logan braes.

But wae's my heart, thae days are gane,
And I wi' grief may herd alane,
While my dear lad maun face his faes,
Far, far frae me and Logan braes.
Nae mair at Logan kirk will he
Atween the preachings meet wi' me:
Meet wi' me, or when it's mirk,
Convoy me hame frae Logan kirk.
I weel may sing thae days are gane :
Frae kirk and fair I come alane,
While my dear lad maun face his faes,
Far, far frae me and Logan braes.
At e'en, when hope amaist is gane,
I dauner out and sit alane;
Sit alane beneath the tree
Where aft he kept his tryst wi' me.
Oh! could I see thae days again,
My lover skaithless, and my ain!
Beloved by friends, revered by faes,
We'd live in bliss on Logan braes !

The characteristic short line,

Herded sheep and gathered slaes, is in some of the versions filled out as

I've herded sheep or gathered slaes.
And the last verse sometimes is made to run:
At e'en, when hope amaist is gane,

I dander dowie and forlane;
Or sit beneath the trysting tree
Where first he spak o' love to me....
Revered by friends, and far frae faes,
We'd live in bliss on Logan braes.

Helen of Kirkconnel.

I wish I were where Helen lies,
For, night and day, on me she cries:
And, like an angel, to the skies

Still seems to beckon me!
For me she lived, for me she sighed,
For me she wished to be a bride;
For me in life's sweet morn she died
On fair Kirkconnel-Lee!
Where Kirtle waters gently wind,
As Helen on my arm reclined,
A rival with a ruthless mind,

Took deadly aim at me :

My love, to disappoint the foe,
Rushed in between me and the blow;
And now her corse is lying low

On fair Kirkconnel-Lee!

Though Heaven forbids my wrath to swell,
I curse the hand by which she fell-
The fiend who made my heaven a hell,
And tore my love from me!

For if, where all the graces shine-
Oh! if on earth there 's aught divine,
My Helen! all these charms were thine-
They centred all in thee!

Ah, what avails it that, amain,

I clove the assassin's head in twain ;
No peace of mind, my Helen slain,
No resting-place for me:

I see her spirit in the air-
I hear the shriek of wild despair,
When Murder laid her bosom bare,
On fair Kirkconnel-Lee!

Oh! when I'm sleeping in my grave,

And o'er my head the rank weeds wave,
May He who life and spirit gave

Unite my love and me!

Then from this world of doubts and sighs,
My soul on wings of peace shall rise;
And, joining Helen in the skies,

Forget Kirkconnel-Lee!

The story of Helen Irving (or Bell), daughter of the Laird of Kirkconnel, in Annandale, slain by the bullet aimed by a rejected suitor at his favoured rival, her betrothed, seems to date from the sixteenth century, and is enshrined in a fine old ballad. There are modern versions by Pinkerton and Jamieson - not to speak of Wordsworth's Ellen Irwin-besides Mayne's. Many of the verses of the old ballad are incomparably more poetic, such as the last :

I wish I were where Helen lies!
Night and day on me she cries,
And I am weary of the skies
For her sake that died for me.

From The Siller Gun.'
The lift was clear, the morn serene,
The sun just glinting ower the scene,
When James M'Noe began again
To beat to arms,
Rousing the heart o' man and wean
Wi' war's alarms.

Frae far and near the country lads
(Their joes ahint them on their yads)
Flocked in to see the show in squads;
And, what was dafter,
Their pawky mithers and their dads
Cam trotting after !

jades-nags

Through crowds on crowds, collected round,

The Corporations

Trudge aff, while Echo's self is drowned In acclamations !

Alexander Wilson (1766-1813), a Scottish weaver-poet, became famous as the skilful delineator of American birds and the enthusiastic describer of American scenery and bird life. Born in Paisley, he was brought up a weaver, but became a pedlar, and in 1789 he added to his muslin goods and other commodities a prospectus of a volume of poems. But his hopes from the sale of his own verse proved vain, and he returned to the loom, at Lochwinnoch and at Paisley. In 1792 he issued anonymously his best poem, Watty and Meg, which was at first attributed to Burns. And Burns almost justified the implied criticism. His wife told Dr Robert Chambers that on hearing a hawker of chapbooks cry Watty and Meg, a new ballad by Robert Burns,' Burns exclaimed, 'I would make your plack a bawbee if it were mine.' A lampoon on the master-weavers during a trade dispute in Paisley, implying indiscreet sympathy with reformers and French revolutionists, drove him to America in 1794. He got work in Philadelphia, travelled as a pedlar in New Jersey, and was a school-teacher in Pennsylvania. His skill in drawing birds led him to make a collection of all the birds in America. In October 1804 he set out on his first excursion, and wrote The Foresters, a Poem. In 1806 he was employed on the American edition of Rees's Cyclopædia. He soon prevailed upon the publisher to undertake a new venturea work illustrating, by his own drawings and with full descriptions, all the birds of America, and in 1808-10 he brought out the first two volumes of the American Ornithology. In 1811 he made a canoe voyage down the Ohio, and travelled overland through the Mississippi Valley from Nashville to New Orleans. He continued 'collecting birds and subscribers,' writing and publishing, traversing swamps and forests in quest of rare birds, and undergoing the greatest privations and fatigues, till he had issued a seventh volume. At Philadelphia he sank under his severe labours, and there he was buried. In his Ornithology he showed he possessed descriptive powers, artistic

The Bald Eagle.

The celebrated cataract of Niagara is a noted place of resort for the bald eagle, as well on account of the fish procured there, as for the numerous carcases of squirrels, deer, bears, and various other animals that, in their attempts to cross the river above the falls, have been dragged into the current, and precipitated down that tremendous gulf, where, among the rocks that bound the rapids below, they furnish a rich repast for the vulture, the raven, and the bald eagle, the subject of the present account. This bird has been long known to naturalists, being common to both continents, and occasionally met with from a very high northern latitude to the borders of the torrid zone, but chiefly in the vicinity of the sea, and along the shores and cliffs of our lakes and large rivers. Formed by nature for braving the severest cold; feeding equally on the produce of the sea and of the land; possessing powers of flight capable of outstripping even the tempests themselves; unawed by anything but man; and, from the ethereal heights to which he soars, looking abroad at one glance on an immeasurable expanse of forests, fields, lakes, and ocean deep below him, he appears indifferent to [localities or] change of seasons, as in a few minutes he can pass from summer to winter, from the lower to the higher regions of the atmosphere, the abode of eternal cold, and from thence descend at will to the torrid or the arctic regions of the earth.

In procuring fish he displays, in a very singular manner, the genius and energy of his character, which is fierce, contemplative, daring, and tyrannical-attributes not exerted but on particular occasions, but when put forth, overpowering all opposition. Elevated on the high dead limb of some gigantic tree that commands a wide view of the neighbouring shore and ocean, he seems calmly to contemplate the motions of the various feathered tribes that pursue their busy avocations below; the snow-white gulls slowly winnowing the air, the busy tringæ coursing along the sands, trains of ducks streaming over the surface, silent and watchful cranes intent and wading, clamorous crows, and all the winged ⚫ multitudes that subsist by the bounty of this vast liquid magazine of nature. High over all these hovers one whose action instantly arrests his whole attention. By his wide curvature of wing and sudden suspension in air, he knows him to be the fish-hawk, settling over some devoted victim of the deep. His eye kindles at the sight, and balancing himself with half-opened wings on the branch, he watches the result. Down, rapid as an arrow from heaven, descends the distant object of his attention, the roar of its wings reaching the ear as it disappears in the deep, making the surges foam around. At this moment the eager looks of the eagle are all ardour; and, levelling his neck for flight, he sees the fish-hawk once more emerge, struggling with his prey, and mounting in the air with screams of exultation. These are the signal for our hero, who, launching into the air, instantly gives chase, and soon gains on the fish-hawk; each exerts his utmost to mount above the other, displaying in these rencontres the most elegant and sublime aërial evolutions. The unencumbered eagle rapidly advances, and is just on the point of reaching his opponent, when, with a sudden scream, probably of

the eagle, poising himself for a moment, as if to take a more certain aim, descends like a whirlwind, snatches it in his grasp ere it reaches the water, and bears his ill-gotten booty silently away to the woods.